No Doubt About It: Muslims Can Handle Freedom
By Isaiah Z. Sterrett (04/30/04)
Last week I wrote a column in which I argued that liberals have started addressing conservatives as ''neoconservatives'' because the word ''conservative''—without the divisive prefix of ''neo''—no longer frightens the American public. By labeling the Bush administration ''neoconservative,'' rather than merely conservative, liberals are trying to undo all of the positive steps conservatives have taken to improve our image.
In other words, liberals are trying to discredit conservatives by calling us names. (I guess you know it was a slow news week when you’re writing stories about decades-old problems.)
In response to my article, I received some rather interesting mail. One message was especially striking. It was written by a ''paleoconservative,'' the wing of conservatism with which Pat Buchanan identifies himself.
Paleoconservatives, to paraphrase the note, believe that freedom must be rooted in a society’s culture. Islamic cultures, he said, don’t have the ability to experience freedom, or any form of government, for that matter, other than oppressive theocracy.
Put a bit less prettily, the writer’s basic thesis was: We Americans may understand freedom, but not those dirty Muslims!
People who think like this don’t deserve to have the word ''conservative'' anywhere near them—with or without some inane prefix. Indeed, people like this are generally known as ''racist.''
Moreover, the notion that a non-free country can’t become free is completely unsupported by history. Japan is perhaps the best example of such a transformation. Thanks to the United States, in just a few decades, the Japanese citizenry went from living under an unelected emperor, to enjoying one of the most prosperous, respected, and stable democracies in the world.
The Russians have a similar story. For nearly a century they were the symbol of brutal despotism—the utter antithesis of American autonomy. They banned the Bible. Blue jeans had to be smuggled in. Millions of people had to wait in hours-long lines for chickens and toilet paper. Today, they are a democracy.
And then there’s the United States of America. We, too, were once ruled by an oppressive government, and we, too, struggled for many years to achieve freedom. But today, as Colin Powell triumphantly reminded Dominique de Villipin at the United Nations, we are the oldest democracy on Earth. (Take that, you cheese-sniffing mollycoddle!)
Just this week, South Africans inaugurated their president, Thabo Mbeki, to a second term, and celebrated a decade as a multiracial democracy. ''Despite the fact that we are a mere 10 years removed from the period of racist dictatorship,'' Mbeki said, ''it is today impossible to imagine a South Africa that is not a democratic South Africa.''
As the San Jose Mercury-News reported, ''The presidents of Zimbabwe, Congo, and Nigeria, the kings of Lesotho and Swaziland, and the vice presidents of India and Iran were among representatives from some 100 countries at the festivities.''
And as for Muslims, what about Israel? True, most of the population is Jewish (approximately 78%), but 15% of Israelis are (mostly Sunni) Muslims. The right-wing, vehemently anti-terror, pro-American leader of Israel, Ariel Sharon, was democratically elected. Obviously Israeli Muslims have been pretty successful with democracy.
No one claims democratizing the Middle-East will be easy. It will be a long, hard, struggle. Much blood will be shed. International support will be tremendously important. Strong leadership will be crucial.
Iraq is where all of this begins. We didn’t go to war because of weapons stockpiles, though that was obviously part of the reason, nor did we go in because of United Nations mandates. We went to war because President Bush had the foresight and wisdom to understand that the Mid-East needed vast, sweeping change.
Tough-talk and a couple of cruise missiles wasn’t going to get the job done. Democracy in the Arab world is the only way terrorism will ever be stopped.
And it is absolutely possible.
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